Summary

Between 1918 and 1920, the Spanish flu infected a third of the global popula­tion. It claimed more lives than either World War I or World War II. Nearly a century later, we are still strug­gling to understand the extent of this pandemic. It crops up from time to time in popular science and history, but no one has yet to take as wide-sweeping an ap­proach as Laura Spinney does in her new book, Pale Rider.